In general, a factory assembly line for mobile devices may include three main stations. In the first station, the motherboard is bootstrapped and tested to determine whether the basic components of the motherboard are functional. If motherboard is determined to function properly, the motherboard is then placed in an enclosure unit (e.g., a housing of a mobile device) and a set of test software is loaded thereon. The set of test software may be an internal version operating system (OS) with additional tools. The set of test software allows for further testing of the entire device as a complete unit. Once the testing is complete, the device enters the second station, the shipping settings station, where the actual customer's operating system (OS) is downloaded onto the device. The majority of the devices go through shipping settings station to the pack-out station where the devices are polished and placed in a box to be shipped to the customers. However, a small percentage of the devices are diverted to the third main station called the Outgoing Quality Control (OQC) station. At OQC station, this small percentage of devices act as a sample and are further tested to ensure that the devices being manufactured are functioning properly. However, the customer OS that is loaded onto the mobile device at the shipping settings station requires activation.
In the customer scenario, in order to activate the device, the customer is asked to connect the device to a host, which can establish communication between the device and an activation server. The activation server can determine whether to activate the device or walk the customer through the steps of obtaining a cellular telephone plan. The device may also be activated with additional information such as information that is used by fair play. Therefore, in the customer scenario, the activation occurs due to the communication between the activation server and the device before the customer can use their mobile device.
However, in the factory setting, at OQC stage, the device is not able to communicate with the activation server. Among other reasons, the device being tested at OQC cannot communicate with the activation server because the connection between the activation server and the factory is not sufficiently reliable to support the production rates that are needed at the factory. Additionally, for security purposes, it is not desirable to allow the factory environment to have access to the activation server, which may be within a corporate network. Thus, if the device cannot be activated, it follows that the device cannot be tested at OQC stage.
In the past, in order to test the device's telephony, a test SIM card was used which would indicate to the device to activate in order to allow for phone call type testing. However, this solution was not feasible for mobile devices that do not use a SIM card. Alternatively, during the shipping setting stage, the devices destined for OQC stage were loaded with a debug OS that indicated to the device to activate in a debug mode, which would allow for testing of the telephony to occur in OQC stage. However, the use of the debug OS for the OQC devices requires a fourth station in the factory line called a restore station. The restore station is needed to replace the debug OS with the customer OS prior to being sent to the pack-out station. Accordingly, the need for a restore station reduces the production rates of the factory line.
Therefore, there is a need to be able to efficiently activate the mobile device during testing in the factory while mitigating the potential harm of having an activated mobile device at a factory level.